What’s the point? The college football playoff system was implemented to make sure that the top two teams get a shot at the national championship. No controversy. And by including four teams, that has been accomplished. I don’t believe that it has ever been alleged that the top two did not make it in. The system was not put in place to be fair to number three, four or five. Nobody has ever claimed that the number 5 team should have been ranked one or two. So under this system number one and two have never been cheated. A has happened in the past. And if three and four deserve to be ranked higher, its fine because they still get in. Everyone who deserves a chance, gets a chance. And seriously, do we really need teams playing three bowl games?
The 6th seed Wild Card in the NFL has never won the Super Bowl…
Winner of each of the Power 5 conference championships and 3 at large bids. What is wrong with that?
UCF hasn’t lost a game in two years including their BCS non playoff game last year but never was even considered for the playoffs.
Undefeated Boise State beat an Adrian Peterson led Oklahoma team that should have been playing in the title game except a blatantly bad ref call literally cost them a game at the end of the season and dropped them out the title game.
Undefeated TCU, back before they were a power 5 school, was never considered for the playoffs and then beat a Wisconsin team that was #5 in the country in the Rose Bowl.
Some of the many reasons it needs to be an eight team playoff with the five Power 5 conference champs getting automatic bids regardless of record and 3 at large bids with the provision that any non power 5 school in the top 12 of the BCS who is also undefeated automatically gets one of the at large bids.
The point? How about giving everybody a shot at winning a real national championship rather than handing out mythical ones every year?
FBS has 130 teams, 10 conferences, and Notre Dame, Army, and BYU as notable independents. Every conference plays a radically different set of opponents. As in, the SEC plays different opponents than the ACC. Picking just 2 or 4, is illogical. The landscape requires at least 6 teams.
More opportunity to win, is a good thing. People like watching football. Expanding to 6 or 8 will make more money for the schools, which is the whole point of the game to begin with.
With 6, you can add two more major bowl games to the plate, and allow the top 4 seeds to pick their bowl site. The top 2 seeds automatically advance to the semi-finals, and 3 plays 6, 4 plays 5. So in 2018, Alabama and Clemson would advance to the semi-finals, and Notre Dame would play Ohio State, and Oklahoma would play Georgia.
Under 8, we would have campus sites for the first two rounds, and a BCS bowl site for the final round. In 2018, UCF would travel to Alabama, and play the Tide. Michigan would travel to Clemson, to play the Tigers. Ohio State would travel to South Bend, to take on Notre Dame. Georgia would travel to Oklahoma to take on the Sooners.
All of these games would be must-see television for football fans, and would make more money for schools across the United States. Sounds like a good deal to me.
BTW - Nobody ever argues that the #5 seed should be the #2 seed, and so worth. Rankings are simply positioning.
Do not like that idea at all.
Some years, the power conference champions aren’t so powerful. 2012 Florida State and Wisconsin come to mind. Ditto for 2011 Clemson, 2010 Virginia Tech, and 2005 and 2002 Florida State. If we counted Big East schools, then you have 2010 Connecticut, 2011 WV, and 2012 Louisville as
I am fine with doing just straight up top 8 OR arguing that the top 6 highest ranked conference champions in the top 12 gets in, and the rest go to at-large teams.
Lets use 2012 Florida State and 2010 VT as an example of why it’s bad to give autos based on conference branding rather than merit. Florida State in 2012 played two FCS schools, best 2 FBS schools with a winning record, and posted a terrible SOS (via Colley Matrix and Anderson & Hester, two of the BCS computer systems) in the .460-.471 range. And just think, what would have happened if Georgia Tech, 6-6, beat FSU in the ACC championship game? You would have a 7-6 school in there.
Now lets turn to VT. The Hokies lost to Boise State AND James Madison. Yes, James Madison, a 6-5 FCS team, which failed to make the FCS tournament that season. The team ended up beating 5 teams with a winning record. In 2010, you had Auburn, Oregon, TCU, Stanford, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and Arkansas in the top 8 via BCS rankings. Boise State was ranked #10. You certainly wouldn’t leap them over Boise State, right? Boise State ended up playing a better schedule (Colley and A&H numbers) than VT and winning the head-to-head.
I would go with a 12-team, all ten conference champions and one top independent (9 wins mandatory) and one at-large (or if no independent wins 9, two at-large) teams.
The non-independent at-large team must be a No. 11 (if there is no top independent) or No. 12 seed.
Top 4 earn byes. Round 1 games (likely the Holiday, Motor City, Texas, and Citrus) before Christmas. Round 2 games where the top four play the winners of Round 1 (the four non-playoff bowls in the New Year’s Six) are the next week. Round 3 games play the third weekend. That’s the semifinals. Round 4, on the Saturday of Conference Championships, is the final.
The real fun would be what would happen if a Alabama-Birmingham faced Tuscaloosa. Or if Appalachian State would shock the world again. But that’s exactly what the format would do. How many fans would watch Cinderella go to the championship game with a chance to win it all?
I like it. Always have…always will.
It’s so simple! Wonder why they don’t do it…NCAA is worse than the mafia.
It’s too much. Nobody needs to play in 3 bowl games. The idea behind the playoffs was to assure that the top two teams always have a chance to compete. It has been 100 percent successful.
Exactly. Clemson and Alabama are the top two. Why should they have to play three extra games to prove it? The current system works perfectly. The top two teams always get to play. Which is why the system was created.
I hope you realize he was being sarcastic.
The system is not going to go back to two teams. That would mean LESS money.
Expansion is inevitable because it will bring in more money and give more teams, more conferences a shot. It’s as simple as that.
Under the 4 playoff, we saw the #4 seed winning twice. The notion that there’s only 2 great teams and nobody else is a fallacy.
Alabama and Clemson wouldn’t be playing 3 extra games. They would be playing ONE extra game. Instead of playing a maximum of 15 games, it would be 16 games.
I agree with an 8 team playoff system, but what I would like to change is the criteria the committee uses. When evaluating two teams they seem to ask “who would win in the playoff” rather than “which has performed better this season”. A team with a fluke loss on their season has performed worse than a team with a fluke win. The commitiee’s decisions should honor wins (fluky or otherwise) over losses.
What about fluky losses caused by bad ref calls.
I brought the game up earlier in defense of Boise State who was excluded from a shot at the national championship because they weren’t in the precious SEC.
But what about the team that Boise beat? Oklahoma. They only lost one game all season and it came late to Oregon. There were multiple horrible bad ref calls in the last two minutes that cost Oklahoma the game. Oregon was trying to come back and went for an onside kick. A Ducks player touched the ball before the ball went ten yards but this penalty was not called. The refs then gave the ball to Oregon even though Oklahoma clearly recovered it. The refs then call pass interference on Oklahoma even though the ball was tipped at the line meaning there can be no pass interference. The refs all got suspended over this game.
This was Oklahoma’s only loss and they were a top two team at the time. They would have played in the national championship game if not for this fluky loss that was caused solely be the refs. And undefeated Boise then beat them in the Fiesta Bowl.
Article about the Oklahoma gave and the refs blown calls so you can see I"m not just embellishing anything:
Referees being human, and wind gusting during field goals and dust in the air and that pointy ball bouncing crazy are all parts of football.
A win is a win and should count more that any committee’s speculation.
The number eight team in the nation has not earned a shot at the national title. If an eight team system is better, then why didn’t they start with an eight team system in the first place? Answer: Because it’s not needed. A four team system pretty much guarantees that number one and number two get a shot. And that is the only reason for it. One team playing three bowl games is extreme.
The only reason why they haven’t made it 8 is because it impacts the bowl system.
The system started with no national championship game, and four major bowl games. Then the system decided to keep the major bowl games, but make one of them the mythical national championship game.
Who said anything about playing in three bowl games?
With 8, you have the first and second round on campus sites, and the final round on a BCS bowl site.
With 6, first round played on campus site, semi and championship on bowl sites.
6 teams
December 1st - Conference championship weekend
December 8th - Army-Navy Game
December 15th - 1st round. 6th @ 3rd, 5th @ 4th.
December 22nd - Bye
December 29th - 2nd round. Winner of 1st round play the #1 and #2 seed at bowl site.
January 7th or 11th - National Championship Game.
8 teams
December 22nd - 1st round. 8th @ 1st, 7th @ 2nd, 6th @ 3rd, 5th @ 4th.
December 29th - Final four teams
January 7th - Championship.
I’d say Georgia was better than Notre Dame. Even Oklahoma for that matter. Of course them not showing up against Texas doesn’t help their case.
Sarcastic post?
8 team playoff. The winners of 4 conferences get home games in the first round against 4 wildcard teams. Those 4 conferences would be determined by the conferences’ previous year’s bowl performances.
That way people would still be interested in the other games because every fan would have a rooting interest in their conference’s bowl performance. It would also encourage Notre Dame to finally join a conference.
